Bill Orcutt - Music In Continuous Motion - VINYL LP

Music in Continuous Motion, Bill Orcutt's latest entry into his 21st-century repertoire of quartet guitar music, pointedly steps away from the cut-and-paste constructivism of Music for Four Guitars into a sonic stratum that's yearningly melodic, resolutely human, and built for performance. Conceived for a 2026 NYC concert, Music in Continuous Motion shares the concision of it's predecessor-but rather than the discrete, mechanistic precision of Music for Four Guitars, the tracks on Music in Continuous Motion unify-each song weaving four gleaming threads into the warp and weft of an evolving, complex texture that employs simple, repeating motifs to build new melodies from counterpoint itself. It accomplishes this in the most efficient manner possible most of these 12 tracks hover around two-and-a- half minutes, each iterating first the substrate, then the melody and it's variations, then slamming shut like a clockwork music box.Based on previous recorded evidence, Orcutt is fond of boundary conditions for his studio guitar records. Much of the time, his launchpad is obvious (The Four Louies, How to Rescue Things); with others, it's intentionally obscured. When recruiting me to write about each , he might send me a clue (InchThis is a bridge pickup record more than a neck pickup record,Inch Orcutt helpfully offered for Music for Four Guitars). Although any given dispatch is a potential red herring, up until now, each has implied an Oulipian conceit (however obtuse) that at least somewhat determines the outcome. Thus, I was a bit surprised by his statement on Music in Continuous Motion-InchThe mystery of how [the] same person, same process, same gear produces different results.Inch When pressed, he elaborated that the record features Inchno triplets,Inch something I've yet to count out to determine for myself.Whatever overarching form the recording process may have mapp